• Akira Toriyama passed away

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Community Discussion and Moderation Feedback

Thanks. I’ve always wondered about the JRPG situation on Xbox platforms. I know they sell better on PlayStation and now Switch, but I want to know if anyone ever bothered to break out western sales specifically and then control for the difference in install bases. How much of the difference in sales comes down to Japan and the size of install bases, and how much of it is audience preference.

Microsoft tried hard in the early 360 era from 2005 to 2009, they outright paid for exclusives with Mistwalker (Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon the then cancelled Cry On) and partially exclusives (Eternal Sonata, Star Ocean 4, Tales of Vesperia, FFXI) some also stayed exclusive (Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery) got almost everything else to be multiplatform (FFXIII, Nier, Resonance of Fate, Front Mission)

It was a notable and hard push that resulted from various factors
- 360 early start in the generation against PS3
- A clear willingness from Microsoft to support and even fund japanese developed games
- Sony and PS3 struggles early gen that made it hard to release games on the console

It's what helped Microsoft build an early positive momentum against PS3 this generation, but once PS3 caught up it ... suddenly stopped

All the IP mentionned above then either dissapeared (Lost Odyssey, Cry On, Eternal Sonata, Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery) or moved on other hardware (Blue Dragon => DS, Star Ocean, Tales of, Nier => back to PS exclusives) and for most it was pretty ovbious that they released exclusively or first on 360 mostly because Microsoft paid the dev/publisher to do so in one way or another

As far as sales are concerned none experience any particular success in western sales, what they did get was lackluster home market sales that were only compensated if they went multiplat or released a port on PS console later on (Eternal Sonata, Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean)

Microsoft bailed out almost entirely from funding JRPG ever since, it most likely wasn't a profitable affair and now they struggle to even convince japanese publishers to even get multiplatform with their hardware despite the supposed much much easier endeavour than it is today (middleware being the same across all hardware, console architecture becoming more and more similar to each other) compared to the past

TLDR; The short version is that they tried to build that audience 10-15y ago, it brought some prestige titles but came to an abrupt stop ever since, looking at numbers not a single RPG experienced a breakthrough on Xbox, at best they sold decently, at worse they flopped, today the marketshare for that kind of title is so minimal that most projects just skip Xbox altogether despite the technical hurdles being the smallest they've ever been

There's also the elephant in the room that was Scalebound, while not a JRPG it certainly soured Microsoft willingness to invest in japanese projects even more than before.
 
Thanks. I’ve always wondered about the JRPG situation on Xbox platforms. I know they sell better on PlayStation and now Switch, but I want to know if anyone ever bothered to break out western sales specifically and then control for the difference in install bases. How much of the difference in sales comes down to Japan and the size of install bases, and how much of it is audience preference.

The only place we get enough data for that is the UK, so that's probably the best thread to start. What you'll find though is that despite being one of Xbox's stronger market JRPGs(and other similar Japanese games) do a very small proportion of their sales on Xbox there.

For instance just some random examples:
Outside of the top titles, Sega's Valkyria Chronicles IV debuts at No.9, with the PS4 version accounting for most of the sales (54%), followed by Switch (39%) and then Xbox One (7%).

There is also another new entry in the Top 10 - Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. The game debuts at No.9. 49 per cent of sales were for the Nintendo Switch version, 43 per cent on PS4 and the rest coming on Xbox One.

For Tales of Arise, 58% of sales were on PS5, 28% on PS4, 13% on Xbox Series X and S and 1% on PC.
 
Question: Since I was asked not to double post, how do I insert a quote into a message that I am editing right now?
An awkward workaround is to just copy the quote box over from a new message draft.
This. It's not ideal.

Double posting takes up a lot of space in the thread, which is why we ask to keep it to a minimum. There's a bit of an unwritten rule on forums that double posts aren't much of a problem to boost the visibility of a thread if there's been no new posts for 24 hours or more. But in general, editing your previous post is cleaner. For adding replies/quotes specifically, it's a bit annoying, unfortunately.
 
This is too late for this time anyway, but while I expect the reaction to be "no", I still think: A full-blown sub-forum for non-sales talk is too much, yes. But I think IB should allow threads for announced events, like a Nintendo Direct or State of Play, where people can get their speculation and hype energy out of their system. These threads could be opened 3 days prior to the event and then closed 3 days after, so that there wouldn't be some permanent off-topic discussion.

But as can be seen in the MC thread, a lot of people want to talk about the Direct tonight and kinda post offtopic about it in a thread about Japanese sales. ;> Tbf though: What's announced at these events is meaningful for future sw and hw sales, so allowing at least temporary discussion in the days before and after an event wouldn't be that much against IB's focus.

Again: It's fine as is, too. But just my personal opinion, having a simple thread "Nintendo Direct 9th Febrary 2022" would be nice to have tonight ;>
 
Install Base is supposed to be a forum dedicated to the analysis and discussion of video game sales data and the games industry.

I understand the hype for the Nintendo Direct and the desire to talk about it. The communication has been clear that we aim to keep this forum focused on our core business only in order to avoid the same pitfalls that other forums fell into by becoming too big to manage. From the beginning, we've said as a staff that Install Base is the place to be for sales talk and that other topics should be discussed in other places. For example Discord, Twitter, Reddit, or Famiboards.

We're not sure yet when exactly we'll do another general community survey, but this is a topic that we will poll members about, and we'll evaluate our position as a staff on this topic afterwards.
 
I just have a couple points of technical feedback. 1) Sometimes while drafting a post, we get a notification that other have posted as well and the "View More" text is hard to read in dark mode. 2) Occasionally when I go to catch up on new discussion in a thread I'm not actually directed to the oldest "New" post and I have to scroll up anywhere from 1 to 3 messages. I've only noticed this recently.
 
I just have a couple points of technical feedback. 1) Sometimes while drafting a post, we get a notification that other have posted as well and the "View More" text is hard to read in dark mode. 2) Occasionally when I go to catch up on new discussion in a thread I'm not actually directed to the oldest "New" post and I have to scroll up anywhere from 1 to 3 messages. I've only noticed this recently.
Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look at point 1 when I get time.
For point 2, that might be more difficult. I'll try and take a look too.
 
Would it make sense to make an Archive thread for the eShop charts threads, or is it too early?
 
I noticed approvals have slowed to a crawl. Has the queue been exhausted?

Maybe there are some things the forum can do to boost traffic and membership like opening up the whole threads in the discourse sub-forum to the public.
 
I noticed approvals have slowed to a crawl. Has the queue been exhausted?

Maybe there are some things the forum can do to boost traffic and membership like opening up the whole threads in the discourse sub-forum to the public.
There's a small queue, because we don't approve people every day, but yeah, it's basically exhausted. However, it's not our mission to continue to grow the member base per se. As a staff, we're fine with the way things are right now.
 
One thing I've been mulling over recently is that, down the line, it might be an interesting idea to let the forum grow from focusing on sales in other industry. The Box Office threads at other forums I've been at have always been interesting and informative to read.

Comics would be another interesting place to discuss sales. I would love to see many people's take here concerning the manga takeover happening in the comic book industry right now.

Any thoughts on doing this in the far, far, faaar future?
 
One thing I've been mulling over recently is that, down the line, it might be an interesting idea to let the forum grow from focusing on sales in other industry. The Box Office threads at other forums I've been at have always been interesting and informative to read.

Comics would be another interesting place to discuss sales. I would love to see many people's take here concerning the manga takeover happening in the comic book industry right now.

Any thoughts on doing this in the far, far, faaar future?
I feel like it would be within the scope of the forum mid-term. Obviously it shouldn't be done carelessly and we will have to work on attracting experts of the BO to start on a solid ground.
 
One thing I've been mulling over recently is that, down the line, it might be an interesting idea to let the forum grow from focusing on sales in other industry. The Box Office threads at other forums I've been at have always been interesting and informative to read.

Comics would be another interesting place to discuss sales. I would love to see many people's take here concerning the manga takeover happening in the comic book industry right now.

Any thoughts on doing this in the far, far, faaar future?
Not to put pressure on the team, things are fine as is, but: I'd love sub-forum for manga/anime sales. Just recently I realized again how different my perception of popular manga/anime franchises is versus what manga/anime actually sell in Japan right now. Would be great if people who are knowledgable about that market would post a weekly manga/anime sales chart-thread or so.
 
Not to put pressure on the team, things are fine as is, but: I'd love sub-forum for manga/anime sales. Just recently I realized again how different my perception of popular manga/anime franchises is versus what manga/anime actually sell in Japan right now. Would be great if people who are knowledgable about that market would post a weekly manga/anime sales chart-thread or so.

I said it before, but Square Enix manga sales would be on topic in the Square Enix thread. Of course a general sub-forum for anime/manga sales would definitely be appealing to me.
 
One thing I've been mulling over recently is that, down the line, it might be an interesting idea to let the forum grow from focusing on sales in other industry. The Box Office threads at other forums I've been at have always been interesting and informative to read.

Comics would be another interesting place to discuss sales. I would love to see many people's take here concerning the manga takeover happening in the comic book industry right now.

Any thoughts on doing this in the far, far, faaar future?

Not to put pressure on the team, things are fine as is, but: I'd love sub-forum for manga/anime sales. Just recently I realized again how different my perception of popular manga/anime franchises is versus what manga/anime actually sell in Japan right now. Would be great if people who are knowledgable about that market would post a weekly manga/anime sales chart-thread or so.

I said it before, but Square Enix manga sales would be on topic in the Square Enix thread. Of course a general sub-forum for anime/manga sales would definitely be appealing to me.

Thanks for your suggestions. We had a brief discussion about a manga/anime sales section but the main concern would be that none of us are expert in this field. That said, we won't be able to attract experts without establishing the playing field for them first.
For now we'll raise the topic, as well as open up the question for other industries, in our next upcoming survey to see how the rest of the community feels and work on the results then.
 
Hello. Not sure how this will go down but I'd like to make a suggestion:

Is it possible to make it more obvious who the staff are when they're posting on the forum?

I'm quite active in the Media Create threads and @Lelouch0612 often comes in and very kindly soft moderates it by telling people to stop discussing certain topics, which I'm on board with.

However, next to Lelouch's name it just says "member". On a cursory glance it appears that another forum poster is instructing discussion to stop (like if I said, it, it wouldn't really hold much weight other than just me moaning about something), which is obviously different to an administrator or moderator asking for it to stop.

You can go look in the staff list to check (which I did) but that's obviously different than just having a little flair next to their name, such as the Archivists have etc.

Thanks :)
 
Hello. Not sure how this will go down but I'd like to make a suggestion:

Is it possible to make it more obvious who the staff are when they're posting on the forum?

I'm quite active in the Media Create threads and @Lelouch0612 often comes in and very kindly soft moderates it by telling people to stop discussing certain topics, which I'm on board with.

However, next to Lelouch's name it just says "member". On a cursory glance it appears that another forum poster is instructing discussion to stop (like if I said, it, it wouldn't really hold much weight other than just me moaning about something), which is obviously different to an administrator or moderator asking for it to stop.

You can go look in the staff list to check (which I did) but that's obviously different than just having a little flair next to their name, such as the Archivists have etc.

Thanks :)
What I'd also like to propose: Marking the INITIAL posting that started a discussion that is deemed "over". It is frustrating when users continue the discussion many posts after the mod-post, only because "they didn't see the mod-post". Makes you want to reply again, but as an upstanding citizen, I listen to a mod's instruction, of course :)

Maybe an edit with some bold, red text at the top of the posting would suffice.
 
What I'd also like to propose: Marking the INITIAL posting that started a discussion that is deemed "over". It is frustrating when users continue the discussion many posts after the mod-post, only because "they didn't see the mod-post". Makes you want to reply again, but as an upstanding citizen, I listen to a mod's instruction, of course :)

Maybe an edit with some bold, red text at the top of the posting would suffice.
For soft moderation I'd suggest using green instead since it's less aggressive.
 
Hello. Not sure how this will go down but I'd like to make a suggestion:

Is it possible to make it more obvious who the staff are when they're posting on the forum?

I'm quite active in the Media Create threads and @Lelouch0612 often comes in and very kindly soft moderates it by telling people to stop discussing certain topics, which I'm on board with.

However, next to Lelouch's name it just says "member". On a cursory glance it appears that another forum poster is instructing discussion to stop (like if I said, it, it wouldn't really hold much weight other than just me moaning about something), which is obviously different to an administrator or moderator asking for it to stop.

You can go look in the staff list to check (which I did) but that's obviously different than just having a little flair next to their name, such as the Archivists have etc.

Thanks :)
This has been applied now so that we have `staff` as our title.
The original motivation behind this was so that we didn't want members to treat us differently to any other members (both staff and mods), but we agree that really we should show it as it helps resolve moderation issues.

What I'd also like to propose: Marking the INITIAL posting that started a discussion that is deemed "over". It is frustrating when users continue the discussion many posts after the mod-post, only because "they didn't see the mod-post". Makes you want to reply again, but as an upstanding citizen, I listen to a mod's instruction, of course :)

Maybe an edit with some bold, red text at the top of the posting would suffice.
For soft moderation I'd suggest using green instead since it's less aggressive.
  • That's a good point about mod-posts being missed. We'll try and make it more noticeable in the future via thread reply banners, or thread markers with title edits
  • For different types of mod posts though, we'll be introducing different standard styling in the future.
  • I'll let the mod team know about using soft moderation vs hard moderation.
 
I feel like something really has to be done or said regarding dogpiling in MC threads. We've had a direct consequence of that with Gartooth making a perfectly innocent point regarding social metrics in this week's thread, only to be followed with half a dozen people or so quoting him to say exactly the same thing, which is pointless and only contributes to exclude of the community anyone that shares an opinion that isn't the status quo.

And I've been down there too. How many times have I made a post introducing an argument only to find eight or nine notifications an hour later, with more posts referring to it without even quoting. When very often, the first replies or two are usually enough summarize the whole counterargument and all the other ones add nothing except wearing down the poster (especially when it's just about posts like "oh this concern again" "nintendoom!!!" and the likes).

I don't think this can go on like this. It's contributing to create a toxic environment for discussions that pushes away people from participating. I myself feel less interested in posting now than months ago, because I know that the most mundane opinion i could post that isn't the one of the most active users on the thread is going to end up in a 1v9 confrontation (the number is made up, I'm not specifically targeting at some people).
 
I feel like something really has to be done or said regarding dogpiling in MC threads. We've had a direct consequence of that with Gartooth making a perfectly innocent point regarding social metrics in this week's thread, only to be followed with half a dozen people or so quoting him to say exactly the same thing, which is pointless and only contributes to exclude of the community anyone that shares an opinion that isn't the status quo.

And I've been down there too. How many times have I made a post introducing an argument only to find eight or nine notifications an hour later, with more posts referring to it without even quoting. When very often, the first replies or two are usually enough summarize the whole counterargument and all the other ones add nothing except wearing down the poster (especially when it's just about posts like "oh this concern again" "nintendoom!!!" and the likes).

I don't think this can go on like this. It's contributing to create a toxic environment for discussions that pushes away people from participating. I myself feel less interested in posting now than months ago, because I know that the most mundane opinion i could post that isn't the one of the most active users on the thread is going to end up in a 1v9 confrontation (the number is made up, I'm not specifically targeting at some people).
What do you suggest?

P.S. I have had to defend an unpopular opinion a few times. If you are not accustomed to debating it can be suffocating.
 
What do you suggest?

P.S. I have had to defend an unpopular opinion a few times. If you are not accustomed to debating it can be suffocating.

It's difficult. Maybe remind people when such situations happen that it's important to be mindful of how one-sided some arguments can be and to not add further to the discussion if it's not necessary?
 
It's difficult. Maybe remind people when such situations happen that it's important to be mindful of how one-sided some arguments can be and to not add further to the discussion if it's not necessary?
It will be hard to adjust the tone of a community that despite the URLs says have been around for years.

It would also be insensitive to tell people to "git gud" or to be caught up on every piece of data or inside joke.

A mixture of both mentalities is what gave birth to this place.

It's important to remember that there are almost 2,000 members here. So the odds are you are not alone in your opinion. Being able to give oxygen to a contrary thought could help others voice their opinion as well. And if anyone crosses the line whilst disagreeing with you report them. The userbase is small enough for you to get a personalized response and hopefully a satisfactory solution.
 
I feel like something really has to be done or said regarding dogpiling in MC threads. We've had a direct consequence of that with Gartooth making a perfectly innocent point regarding social metrics in this week's thread, only to be followed with half a dozen people or so quoting him to say exactly the same thing, which is pointless and only contributes to exclude of the community anyone that shares an opinion that isn't the status quo.

And I've been down there too. How many times have I made a post introducing an argument only to find eight or nine notifications an hour later, with more posts referring to it without even quoting. When very often, the first replies or two are usually enough summarize the whole counterargument and all the other ones add nothing except wearing down the poster (especially when it's just about posts like "oh this concern again" "nintendoom!!!" and the likes).

I don't think this can go on like this. It's contributing to create a toxic environment for discussions that pushes away people from participating. I myself feel less interested in posting now than months ago, because I know that the most mundane opinion i could post that isn't the one of the most active users on the thread is going to end up in a 1v9 confrontation (the number is made up, I'm not specifically targeting at some people).
I understand it as a problem too, but solving that feels a lot easier said than done.

Since this is a place that constantly resolves around discussion, it is only natural that people engage with their own opinions, even if said opinions are not exactly the most original/fruitful in the ongoing conversation. Telling people that their opinion is 'not needed' because it was already said by another member doesn't sound like the answer, since that might discourage someone that can eventually contribute to another discussion, but might feel that all opinions of them are not needed in any conversation of the forum because of an eventual 'warn'.

With Gartooth case specifically, I only noticed two post(er)s that went with what could be read as an aggressive demeanor, most replies sounded like interested in an actual discussion, even if the opinion on the argument was a bit one-sided. However, what I notice as a problem in 'dogpilling' (and general discussions, to be honest) is that there is a, natural, tendency to adopt overly aggressive stances. Staff could be a bit more strict to try fix that? Maybe that would help, but something I noticed is that many members outright leave the forum after getting their first (or second) ban, and, once again, that would not be ideal. While, here, I'm critical of the 'heated' atmosphere that MC threads can have sometimes, I don't blame anyone for it, because, first, I wrote replies that I, myself, later judge to be unnecesarely 'agressive' many times, and second, because being 'defensive' about your own opinions is natural, so I understand that being 'aggresive' is not what they are trying to achieve at all.

It goes without saying, but I'm not a long time member of the community, nor a super-active member in Media Create threads, so my views might not be accurate.
 
I have been deeply moved by Gartooth departure and thinking about how we can avoid a similar situation in the future.

Truth is, and many of us have been in this situation before, getting quote-replied a lot can feel very overwhelming. It doesn't necessarily is a "dogpile" tho, in this case, Gartooth raised a very interesting topic and since people like to discuss/engage with them, they got a ton of replies.

That, in itself, would already feel overwhelming. The fact that one or two posters were rather dismissive added to this. They got moderated a few hours after but I can't expect from the mods to warn in real time.

I think maybe the answer is when a poster or a mod see a ton of replies to one genuinely interesting take, then they can ask the discussion to move to a new thread. That way the user won't be alone to voice his opinion and the replies won't be directly adressed to him, decreasing the overwhelming feeling.
 
I have been deeply moved by Gartooth departure and thinking about how we can avoid a similar situation in the future.

Truth is, and many of us have been in this situation before, getting quote-replied a lot can feel very overwhelming. It doesn't necessarily is a "dogpile" tho, in this case, Gartooth raised a very interesting topic and since people like to discuss/engage with them, they got a ton of replies.

That, in itself, would already feel overwhelming. The fact that one or two posters were rather dismissive added to this. They got moderated a few hours after but I can't expect from the mods to warn in real time.

I think maybe the answer is when a poster or a mod see a ton of replies to one genuinely interesting take, then they can ask the discussion to move to a new thread. That way the user won't be alone to voice his opinion and the replies won't be directly adressed to him, decreasing the overwhelming feeling.

I don't think that's a valid solution most of the time to be honest. Not everything warrants a new thread, especially when it's a contribution to an ongoing discussion.

People just need to be respectful of others, and dial it down a notch sometimes.
 
The problem with "dogpiles" is that imo in most cases they are non-intentional, they are in most cases the result of a combination of the following:
1. there is a post many people want to respond to
2. when they respond, they haven't seen yet there were lots of other replies.

It's just the way people read threads - they enter the thread from the last post they haven't read, reach a post they MUST respond to (or so they feel...), and more often than not respond first and only then continue reading the thread (only then realizing 10 others responded...). Or maybe they want to post a unique take.

Here's an idea that might help at least in some cases (realistic probably only if this is a feature already built in into the forum software as an option) - each post, if it has been quoted, will show somewhere the number of times it has been quoted/responded to, with perhaps the number being a link to a separate new page with all responses...

Beyond that, dogpiles/multiple responses become really bad only when some of the responses are unpleasant. As Oregano wrote "People just need to be respectful of others, and dial it down a notch sometimes." - and those that are not respectful should be reported so they at least get a heads up, some people may even be unaware that they sometimes sound disrespectful.
 
There is also the other side if the spectrum. Where I belong. I post extremely rarely. For example, there have been many occasions when I deleted a post (not posting at all) because in the mean time others have replied. OK, maybe I am slow? But in the end I felt that my post would be unnecessary for various reasons. I didn't want to be seen as an "intruder poster". Now I know it is called "dogpiling" and it is bad. Or being the one who "misunderstands". So a good thing I didn't post on those occasions. Gartooth's reaction, Fisico's modpost (2/3 of that modpost should not be in the MC thread but here) and HFbob's warning (what?!) for that self defence post afterwards only reinforced my view on that matter.

For newcomers, especially less experienced in forum talk in general, it is already hard to get into because of the vast knowlegde which is actually required in a specialized forum like this one. General forum rules is one thing and that's a non-issue. But that's the first checklist. In order to not look stupid or bothering, sales data checklist has to be checked. But if one can look-up all necessary sales data then a forum post is usually obsolete. Thus reducing this forum to a mere database. There is also an unknown checklist of closed topics which apparently cannot be reopened. This protects regulars and long time members from circling around the same topic forever (which is understandable) but it almost requires a degree in game sales forum history spanning three ages (gaf, reset, ib).

Don't get me wrong, I do understand the problems, but I have a feeling the reactions and solutions applied create even more problems. And no, I don't have any solution in mind. Just wanted to throw out what was bugging me.
 
There is also the other side if the spectrum. Where I belong. I post extremely rarely. For example, there have been many occasions when I deleted a post (not posting at all) because in the mean time others have replied. OK, maybe I am slow? But in the end I felt that my post would be unnecessary for various reasons. I didn't want to be seen as an "intruder poster". Now I know it is called "dogpiling" and it is bad. Or being the one who "misunderstands". So a good thing I didn't post on those occasions. Gartooth's reaction, Fisico's modpost (2/3 of that modpost should not be in the MC thread but here) and HFbob's warning (what?!) for that self defence post afterwards only reinforced my view on that matter.

For newcomers, especially less experienced in forum talk in general, it is already hard to get into because of the vast knowlegde which is actually required in a specialized forum like this one. General forum rules is one thing and that's a non-issue. But that's the first checklist. In order to not look stupid or bothering, sales data checklist has to be checked. But if one can look-up all necessary sales data then a forum post is usually obsolete. Thus reducing this forum to a mere database. There is also an unknown checklist of closed topics which apparently cannot be reopened. This protects regulars and long time members from circling around the same topic forever (which is understandable) but it almost requires a degree in game sales forum history spanning three ages (gaf, reset, ib).

Don't get me wrong, I do understand the problems, but I have a feeling the reactions and solutions applied create even more problems. And no, I don't have any solution in mind. Just wanted to throw out what was bugging me.
The problem (and what earns most warnings) is more often than not people's tone, not what they say. So if (when someone holds themselves from posting) they were about to post something with an aggressive/dismissive tone, they were right to hold themselves.

As I understood it, HFbob's warning was mainly because they answered the mod post in the MC thread even though people were requested to post any related comments in this thread here. The request was in the very same post HFBob responded to phrase by phrase, so they can't claim they didn't see it, they obviously just didn't care... And the tone of their answer was also off, they could have said the very same things differently.
 
Yeah, HFbob warning was warranted. Their "get thicker skin" post also rubs me the wrong way since it puts it on other forum members to deal with their overly aggressive tone rather than them dealing with their tone themselves.

EDIT: Oregano's statement of "people need to be respectful of others and dial it down a notch sometimes" is something that I agree with.
 
If you post on a public forum you have to expect to get multiple responses depending on the content of your post, this isnt dogpiling as long as everything happens in a respectful tone. Its not realistic to expect every user to check for all other responses in realtime, that between the time your read and answered the post. Everyone here has posted something that resulted in multiple random quotes and at that point its on you how to handle it - pick and chose what you want or need to reply to, if it gets too much just ignore it and move on. In the end this is a hobby for most of us and if you feel you are putting yourself in situations and arguments that affect your well being its okay to just take a couple step backs.

So receiving multiple respoinses that question your statement isnt dogpiling. That would be the case for aggressive and harassing posts but from what ive seen so far moderation would jump in early enough to prevent a dogpile and, when it happens its usually limited to 1-2 users that get warned to chill out if necessary.

On the other hand i can understand how this can come off as tiresome for people that might have a different view on things than what is regarding that somewhat standard in the specific thread. Thats what discussions are about in the end and you cant win them all, so it might be best to pick and choose what users you really wanna engage with and adapt your consuming and posting style to what makes sense for you.

PS. I havent really looked into it but it felt like this week in the MC thread we had couple instances of users (not Gartooth) that havent posted in a while or at least arent frequent posting takes in the thread resulting in a lot of responses and quotes because they were.....questionable takes that most frequent posters would likely challenge.

Its weird i can see how it could be liberating to explore some discussions or arguments that arent usually popular in these threads, but if it requires some kind of safe space where other community members cant respond or have to jump through multiple hoops so it doesnt appear as dogpiling, its kinda missing the point.
 
If you post on a public forum you have to expect to get multiple responses depending on the content of your post, this isnt dogpiling as long as everything happens in a respectful tone. Its not realistic to expect every user to check for all other responses in realtime, that between the time your read and answered the post. Everyone here has posted something that resulted in multiple random quotes and at that point its on you how to handle it - pick and chose what you want or need to reply to, if it gets too much just ignore it and move on. In the end this is a hobby for most of us and if you feel you are putting yourself in situations and arguments that affect your well being its okay to just take a couple step backs.

So receiving multiple respoinses that question your statement isnt dogpiling. That would be the case for aggressive and harassing posts but from what ive seen so far moderation would jump in early enough to prevent a dogpile and, when it happens its usually limited to 1-2 users that get warned to chill out if necessary.

On the other hand i can understand how this can come off as tiresome for people that might have a different view on things than what is regarding that somewhat standard in the specific thread. Thats what discussions are about in the end and you cant win them all, so it might be best to pick and choose what users you really wanna engage with and adapt your consuming and posting style to what makes sense for you.

PS. I havent really looked into it but it felt like this week in the MC thread we had couple instances of users (not Gartooth) that havent posted in a while or at least arent frequent posting takes in the thread resulting in a lot of responses and quotes because they were.....questionable takes that most frequent posters would likely challenge.

Its weird i can see how it could be liberating to explore some discussions or arguments that arent usually popular in these threads, but if it requires some kind of safe space where other community members cant respond or have to jump through multiple hoops so it doesnt appear as dogpiling, its kinda missing the point.
I feel like the difference to what you talk about in your last paragraph is: Do I want to genuinely discuss something or do I only want to tell someone that the statement he/she made earlier is wrong/stupid?

If it's the former and I word myself politely, then no amount of replies should be too much. Ofc, the quoted person shouldn't be expected to reply to everyone then, either.

If it's the latter, however, then I should ask myself "alright, 3-4 people already made snarky reply to that user's statement. Do I really need to add another?" This here would be dogpiling imo, no matter how justified it might seem.

As for Gartooth's account deletion, I found that sad, but also unnecessary, because the last exchange I saw of him and other users in the MC-thread didn't seem to be that severe and dramatic. Maybe there was more in another thread? Either way, I feel IB's moderation is good enough that any user can just contact them if help is needed, long before contemplating about account deletion.
 
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If it's the latter, however, then I should ask myself "alright, 3-4 people already made snarky reply to that user's statement. Do I really need to add another?" This here would be dogpiling imo, no matter how justified it might seem.
In a perfect world it could work like this but expecting every user to take the time to go through all potential responses to a certain post and making sure that there isnt any kind of redundancy, just isnt realistic - especially when its a big thread with multiple users having different discussions in it.

If you post something and get multiple replies in a short amount of time you can assume that many of these replies were being written and posted around the same time. If they all contain more or less the same response, respond to all of them or take one as an example to get the message across.

Also why wouldnt i make the point clear in my own words instead of relying and leaving it to a couple snarky replies that might have been potentially be posted before my reply. In the end every user posts for themselves and expecting the community to move and behave like some hivemind isnt realistic.

Bummer that Gartooth felt like account deletion was the only way for him to move forward, but i dont think there is any scenario where this plays out completely different.

If people would still reply to a post you made hours and days after everything was cleared up i could understand the frustration more, but not for something that happend in the span of an hour or something.
 
Yeah, HFbob warning was warranted. Their "get thicker skin" post also rubs me the wrong way since it puts it on other forum members to deal with their overly aggressive tone rather than them dealing with their tone themselves.

EDIT: Oregano's statement of "people need to be respectful of others and dial it down a notch sometimes" is something that I agree with.
Yes and no. I agree that HFbob's reply was a bit agressive and quite some time after the modpost, but in this case I would make an exception and skip a formal warning.

We are now discussing agressivness in posts by regular members, but no one seems to care about agressive and derailing modposts. Please forgive me, but I have to address this issue. Fisico's post should have been something along the line:
"One of our members decided to leave this forum due certain posts on topic X in this thread. Please do not continue topic X during [insert time frame] and do not discuss this issue here. You are welcome and highly encouraged to discuss the issue in thread Y." Or similar. And continue here, in this thread.

And what is wrong with that modpost?
E.g. "you reopened a closed topic, misunderstood and misrepresented" and "he felt he was being harassed/piled on with dozen of posters". I am confused, is HFbob the sole bad guy or do we have "dozens" of them? To misunderstand is human. A post will quite often have a bit of missing info or context. Are we not allowed to be... human?
And this part was really unnecessary: "I guess you won and can be proud" - just... eh, no comment. I don't want to be banned.

Point is, there cannot be a "rules for thee but not for me” mentality. If you expect posters to follow rules etc., then all mods/staff/admin should do so likewise. Lead by example.

This place is already miles better than the other ones. I especially like all the staff soft modding. A breath of fresh air. Warnings and bans are needed in some situation, but we need more dialog. Certainly discussing issues in a thread like this should also help, to find the root cause.
 
Yes and no. I agree that HFbob's reply was a bit agressive and quite some time after the modpost, but in this case I would make an exception and skip a formal warning.
Let's not embellish things, it is not just a matter of being "quite some time" after the mod post, HFBob ignored the instructions part from the mod post on purpose:

HFBob dissected into 4 parts and responded to every single word in the mod post - except the last sentence, the one specifically asking to continue things here if necessary. That part (and only that part) they left out of their response, and then they went and posted their response on purpose (there is no way around that) in the MC thread.
 
Let's not embellish things, it is not just a matter of being "quite some time" after the mod post, HFBob ignored the instructions part from the mod post on purpose:

HFBob dissected into 4 parts and responded to every single word in the mod post - except the last sentence, the one specifically asking to continue things here if necessary. That part (and only that part) they left out of their response, and then they went and posted their response on purpose (there is no way around that) in the MC thread.
Everything you wrote is correct. I do understand that HFbob's (self defense) response was on purpose. The issue is that the response should have been exceptionally allowed, because of the modpost which was an agressive trigger post.
 
Sorry If this has been proposed before.
I'm not familiar with the code used in this forum but I would think that is possible to keep track of how many times a post has been quoted. If for example I tried to quote a post that has been quoted X times before I could get a message stating that the post has many quotes and suggesting me to read the thread and to check if I'm adding something that has not being said before. Or alert a mod if a post has been quoted Y times.

I know this doesn't solve the issue, not even close but maybe a starting point.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense
 
Rules aren't the end all and be all. At some point users are responsible for their own behavior. And plenty of people have noted there has been an increase in sniping, drive-bys, passive-aggressiveness, and rudeness in attempts to "win" arguments across the forum lately. People need to ask themselves if rushing to slam a post they disagree with or attempting to constantly get the last word in is worth creating an negative atmosphere that makes people feel unwelcome or stop wanting to post. Sometimes you gotta look at the bigger picture, folks.
 
Rules aren't the end all and be all. At some point users are responsible for their own behavior. And plenty of people have noted there has been an increase in sniping, drive-bys, passive-aggressiveness, and rudeness in attempts to "win" arguments across the forum lately. People need to ask themselves if rushing to slam a post they disagree with or attempting to constantly get the last word in is worth creating an negative atmosphere that makes people feel unwelcome or stop wanting to post. Sometimes you gotta look at the bigger picture, folks.
You are assuming that everyone here is on the same page in terms of what they consider a negative atmosphere, bringing up the bigger picture is easier said than done when every user recieves things differently.

Personally I would never think of dropping the forum because 10 or no matter how many people disagree with a post of mine or quote me but at the same time i can understand why a different user might recieve the same thing as hostile and immediately remove himself from the situation.

In the end this is a public board and everyone is free and entitled to their opinion as long as basic etiquette is considered. Overall takes might be shared among multiple users doesn't mean that the information these posts contains or how the information is expressed can be a 1:1 is the same.

As with posting you are free to chose what posts you wanna address, some kind of limit how and when people are gonna reply to your statements on a public forum is not gonna work in my opinion. Not everyone has the time to work through all posts and the full thread dynamic when browsing the board and they might just wanna reply to a single comment they happen to read.

To be sure i agree with you on the things you listed as issues but the way you combat them is through reporting posts and addressing the behaviour when you see it come up.

This is still a rather new community and a fresh start for many users so I guess there is some kind of leniency going on to really try and see if users are gonna adapt their posting style after a couple of warnings. Sadly it seems that some users are really only here to to push negative agendas, coupled with a posting style that is gonna irritate large portions of the community.

In the end it's all about communication, until that doesn't work no more. People really should address and report the issues they have instead of just believing that everyone is on the same page as them...because that's likely not the case and your experience might differ quite a lot when and what topics you are frequently active.
 
There are wall-o-text resources for new members (as seen below) but maybe we should have a separate omnibus thread for beginners and casual chart watchers where debate is actually discouraged and people can post any opinion, thought, theory or question they have without having their heads bitten off for what some regulars perceive as ignorance. Maybe some regulars can take a few minutes out of their day to answer questions or generally guide the discussion in a good direction, maybe even letting people volunteer proposing or request a topic of the day to chew on.

I wonder what lurkers, new members or people generally wanting less snark with their data think of that?



 
Since I'm the one who redirected the discussion here (rightfully so I think) in the first place, allow me to intervene.

I should preface this post by saying I followed the exchange here yesterday and chose to not intervene in order to not lead where it should be going and let everyone some time to say what they wanted to say, I felt it was the right thing to do and looking at what's been shared so far (especially Ystad on my case) it feels like I was correct on that at least.

As usual in this topic, everything below will be my personal take, this is not a mod post nor is it endorsed by every staff member (although we probably do share at least some degree of common view on most of what I'm going to say below)

With Gartooth case specifically, I only noticed two post(er)s that went with what could be read as an aggressive demeanor, most replies sounded like interested in an actual discussion, even if the opinion on the argument was a bit one-sided. However, what I notice as a problem in 'dogpilling' (and general discussions, to be honest) is that there is a, natural, tendency to adopt overly aggressive stances. Staff could be a bit more strict to try fix that? Maybe that would help,

There were indeed only two, one which was dealt with properly with a post of mine (ironically, unlike what Lelouch0612 said, it only took 30mn between the report (from Gartooth) and the moderation, it was pure luck though as a "few hours" is more representative oh how long it takes usually), the second once was HFbob that came long after and once the matter was already dropped, all the other quotes weren't the problem in itself but part of why the user felt overwhelmed.
As one can guess it wasn't the first time such thing was happening, whether to Gartooth or some other members, it just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back in the least elegant possible way.

Three extra points I wanted to mention which are related

On the matter of timing of moderation, I must strain that nearly all moderation actions are decided collegially by few people (between 3-5 typically) because "slamdunk" warnings/bans are (thankfully) not that frequent, the thing is, as some of us are in different timezones, even though every report is read by someone rather quickly, it will take usually a few hours at least to be actionned unless it's very egregious.
It might lead to the feeling that moderation is being "slow" (not that long ago with the "crappy gamers" stuff on MC thread) but it also helps to avoid decisions made by an individual in the heat of the moment which could end up not being the wisest choice.

On strict moderation : I feel we are being extremely lenient overall, to a fault maybe even (see more on the next point), the usual flow of moderation usually go like this

1 - A post gets 1 or 2 reports : More often than not we aren't doing anything unless the thread gets derailed or the post really is doubtful, in a ideal world the best moderation is self moderation by the community
2 - This is the xth time a user gets reported, often for the same kind of reason, we try to use "soft" moderation as in a mod makes a post to kindly ask in thread for the reported user to stop (bad faith, agressive tone, ad personam etc.), or sometimes going through PM
3 - It happens again, this time a warning is due
4 - And again, second warning
5 - ... and again, we can escalade to temp ban or thread ban depending on the timescale of the events, temp ban ranges from 1 day to a couple weeks so far I think
6 - Permaban is the last step and an incredibly rare occurence (there are 4 of them currently, 3 which we have been very patient with and a self requested one which happened after multiple warnings/temp ban), there's only one perma thread reply ban

But above is just a theorical way of things to unfold, if the wrongdoing is blatant it will go much faster, if someone goes into a frenzy as well, we adapt the sanction case by case and after discussing between staff members as mentioned above.

In any case warnings are just that, warnings, multiple members received one or more because of what we judge as a misstep and are still doing fine there, it's not a surefireway to a ban afterwards, sometimes we make mistakes what's important is to know when to stop and recognizing we made those mistakes.

Overall the vast majority of the reports are akin to tone policing though, and this is where we are a bit uncomfortable on what to do (and reports take longer to deal with), it also often involves two or more sides where, more often than not, both have their own share of spiraling the thing into a bigger mess than it should be.
We don't want moderation to be used as a way to "win" your debate or beat into the ground someone who's already getting piled on, ok maybe that person was wrong (whether it's about data or the way he framed his argument, it doesn't matter) but she/he didn't get there alone and amongst the various courses of action you could take (like dropping the subject, trying to empathize with the other poster to find some kind of agreement, trying to reframe his/her own argument to better understand what he/she wanted to point out etc.) it's more often than not just people arguing back and forth and getting more heated while having no interest whatsoever to find any sort of common ground.

Honestly it just comes down to
People just need to be respectful of others, and dial it down a notch sometimes.
but something I noticed is that many members outright leave the forum after getting their first (or second) ban,

Mind I ask who that would be?
Chairman comes to mind, Zenitora (who self requested his perma ban, to be fair it was a bit of a relief for us with the amount of concern/moderation we needed to have with him) after checking warning history I also see Bryank75, McSpeed and... that's it?

Ban is rare, multiple bans I think there are litterally only a few of them (more than a couple one could say)

The problem with "dogpiles" is that imo in most cases they are non-intentional, they are in most cases the result of a combination of the following:
1. there is a post many people want to respond to
2. when they respond, they haven't seen yet there were lots of other replies.

It's just the way people read threads - they enter the thread from the last post they haven't read, reach a post they MUST respond to (or so they feel...), and more often than not respond first and only then continue reading the thread (only then realizing 10 others responded...). Or maybe they want to post a unique take.

It's clearly what happened there with HFBob, it wasn't the first time either and I don't think this is a posting style we should endorse as a community, while clearly it wasn't the intended effect it was the direct cause of having one of our member (which we had 0 problem with) ask for a permaban due to not being comfortable here anymore.

This is a net loss for the community, and one we could have avoided and that I made a direct action for only for it to be squandered not long after.

For example, there have been many occasions when I deleted a post (not posting at all) because in the mean time others have replied. OK, maybe I am slow? But in the end I felt that my post would be unnecessary for various reasons. I didn't want to be seen as an "intruder poster".

I feel like this the right attitude to have instead of skipping the whole discussion altogether to reply to what's convenient for you while ignoring everything else
I'm not a big poster myself, and my total is being inflated by the number of mod posts I had to do lately so I get the feeling and... it's alright ? If you put your ego asides and come here with the intent of learning and exchange occasionnaly whenever you feel comfortable and/or legitimate doing so this is perfectly fine

In the end it comes down to what vision of a forum you wish to enforce, there is no secret that I'm more fond of having less but more valuable posts and I have my gripes with low effort posts, 1 line snarky posts (or reactionnary pics), double posts, and posts ignoring whole discussions altogether and jumping in late.

What we're trying to enforce is less of that whenever possible, of course it's still cool to have fun once in a while, but this is a forum, not 4chan, not Twitter, not Discord, not Facebook, we all have plenty of time to post whatever we want to post and it's not a real time live discussion happening. I guess it might not come off as too newcomer friendly, which isn't the aim in itself per se as I don't remember any newcomer with honest questions being shunned here ever, and be a bit time consuming but... I mean overall what's up to debate here is what kind of level of discussion you want/expect to have.

HFBob's posts at that point were like litterally the embodiment of many things I wish we wouldn't have

- Double post
- Barging in ignoring the matter was closed (only would have taken looking a few posts below)
- Misreading the original point
- Somehow missing the fact it was a mod post (not the most surprising fact considering the above points)
- Replying back after being told to stop and redirect him to this topic if needed (although considering my post I understand why he did it, doesn't make it right but I'll come to that later on)


In the end it also comes down to respect, like, does that post need to be from a mod for it to make sense ?
If it's from a mod you bow down to it only because it was written by some figure of authority, while if it's not the case then it's definitely something to be combative about ?
It does give more legitimacy but it feels like a terrible way of thinking, the crux of the matter isn't who spoke but what was spoken, I don't want anyone to blindly agree with me because I can enforce some punitions on the forum, I'm also a member first and foremost (even if being a mod has taken a toll on my capacity to being so due to the time investment at some points like here)


Yes and no. I agree that HFbob's reply was a bit agressive and quite some time after the modpost, but in this case I would make an exception and skip a formal warning.

We are now discussing agressivness in posts by regular members, but no one seems to care about agressive and derailing modposts. Please forgive me, but I have to address this issue. Fisico's post should have been something along the line:
"One of our members decided to leave this forum due certain posts on topic X in this thread. Please do not continue topic X during [insert time frame] and do not discuss this issue here. You are welcome and highly encouraged to discuss the issue in thread Y." Or similar. And continue here, in this thread.

And what is wrong with that modpost?
E.g. "you reopened a closed topic, misunderstood and misrepresented" and "he felt he was being harassed/piled on with dozen of posters". I am confused, is HFbob the sole bad guy or do we have "dozens" of them? To misunderstand is human. A post will quite often have a bit of missing info or context. Are we not allowed to be... human?
And this part was really unnecessary: "I guess you won and can be proud" - just... eh, no comment. I don't want to be banned.

Point is, there cannot be a "rules for thee but not for me” mentality. If you expect posters to follow rules etc., then all mods/staff/admin should do so likewise. Lead by example.

This place is already miles better than the other ones. I especially like all the staff soft modding. A breath of fresh air. Warnings and bans are needed in some situation, but we need more dialog. Certainly discussing issues in a thread like this should also help, to find the root cause.

I agree with a good part of what you said and I'm glad someone pointed it out, it wouldn't have felt right to run away with it.
To be honest I wrote something even worse at first, but quickly edited some of it out, it's not hard to guess why and how I ended up posting that, just check @Lelouch0612 post above.

On that particular moderation event I did the whole thing, stepped in for a mod post to try to stop the piling up on Gartooth, replied back to HFBob and enforced his warning, honestly I shouldn't have and it would've been better for me to step back at some point (another mod also proposed to enforce the warning, but as I was available first I did it myself) as it's something we have done before between mods to avoid making moderation feels like a personal affair, this is the kind of backfire that can happen when you deal with moderation tasks too quickly, lesson learned I hope.

Regardless HFBob warning is still 100% justified for multiple reasons mentioned above and in others posts as well, but don't worry about it, a warning isn't much.

Now on my case... if I were to follow the 6 points guidelines I layed above then... I had no report on my post (I think it's still possible to report mod posts) but we can think I didn't because I was a mod, so for the sake of the argument let's say you reported me there, which would be fine. It's certainly singular to report a mod but why not, that stuff might be needed at times in order to avoid power trips which most of us probably saw happening at least once in our life

Anyway the logical "punishment" I would take trying to take an outsider point of view would be some kind of slap on the wrist, there was no prior infrigement that I know off so that thing would logically be either a PM or a mod post in thread which is the usual first step, I can do self admonishment here all I want but that wouldn't look right, I can ask @WestEgg @Coco or @Hiska-kun too but it'd still feel a bit fabricated.

So yeah I don't know, unless you have a better idea you'll have to take my word for it, I did try to spend a fair amount of time explaing myself there, laying out as much as I could and take the blame where I feel like I should.

And this part was really unnecessary: "I guess you won and can be proud" - just... eh, no comment. I don't want to be banned.

I hope this is not how you really feel, because as you can see we can share pretty much anything there, a mod, like any other member, can and should be criticized when it's needed.

Wait what? A mod said that?

Yes, not my best showing clearly and I'm sorry for that.
 
Mind I ask who that would be?
Chairman comes to mind, Zenitora (who self requested his perma ban, to be fair it was a bit of a relief for us with the amount of concern/moderation we needed to have with him) after checking warning history I also see Bryank75, McSpeed and... that's it?

Ban is rare, multiple bans I think there are litterally only a few of them (more than a couple one could say)
I meant that members that are (temporarily) banned will often not return anymore. All the members you mentioned are some of the examples I was thinking about and I believe DCSales also never returned (at least they didn't post anymore) after their last ban. The only (non-self requested) temporarily banned member to return that I can remember was Glory, which was... well... an obvious troll. But I'm saying this only from memory, so I might be missing more people. I agree that bans are rare.
 
Since I'm the one who redirected the discussion here (rightfully so I think) in the first place, allow me to intervene.

I should preface this post by saying I followed the exchange here yesterday and chose to not intervene in order to not lead where it should be going and let everyone some time to say what they wanted to say, I felt it was the right thing to do and looking at what's been shared so far (especially Ystad on my case) it feels like I was correct on that at least.

As usual in this topic, everything below will be my personal take, this is not a mod post nor is it endorsed by every staff member (although we probably do share at least some degree of common view on most of what I'm going to say below)



There were indeed only two, one which was dealt with properly with a post of mine (ironically, unlike what Lelouch0612 said, it only took 30mn between the report (from Gartooth) and the moderation, it was pure luck though as a "few hours" is more representative oh how long it takes usually), the second once was HFbob that came long after and once the matter was already dropped, all the other quotes weren't the problem in itself but part of why the user felt overwhelmed.
As one can guess it wasn't the first time such thing was happening, whether to Gartooth or some other members, it just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back in the least elegant possible way.

Three extra points I wanted to mention which are related

On the matter of timing of moderation, I must strain that nearly all moderation actions are decided collegially by few people (between 3-5 typically) because "slamdunk" warnings/bans are (thankfully) not that frequent, the thing is, as some of us are in different timezones, even though every report is read by someone rather quickly, it will take usually a few hours at least to be actionned unless it's very egregious.
It might lead to the feeling that moderation is being "slow" (not that long ago with the "crappy gamers" stuff on MC thread) but it also helps to avoid decisions made by an individual in the heat of the moment which could end up not being the wisest choice.

On strict moderation : I feel we are being extremely lenient overall, to a fault maybe even (see more on the next point), the usual flow of moderation usually go like this

1 - A post gets 1 or 2 reports : More often than not we aren't doing anything unless the thread gets derailed or the post really is doubtful, in a ideal world the best moderation is self moderation by the community
2 - This is the xth time a user gets reported, often for the same kind of reason, we try to use "soft" moderation as in a mod makes a post to kindly ask in thread for the reported user to stop (bad faith, agressive tone, ad personam etc.), or sometimes going through PM
3 - It happens again, this time a warning is due
4 - And again, second warning
5 - ... and again, we can escalade to temp ban or thread ban depending on the timescale of the events, temp ban ranges from 1 day to a couple weeks so far I think
6 - Permaban is the last step and an incredibly rare occurence (there are 4 of them currently, 3 which we have been very patient with and a self requested one which happened after multiple warnings/temp ban), there's only one perma thread reply ban

But above is just a theorical way of things to unfold, if the wrongdoing is blatant it will go much faster, if someone goes into a frenzy as well, we adapt the sanction case by case and after discussing between staff members as mentioned above.

In any case warnings are just that, warnings, multiple members received one or more because of what we judge as a misstep and are still doing fine there, it's not a surefireway to a ban afterwards, sometimes we make mistakes what's important is to know when to stop and recognizing we made those mistakes.

Overall the vast majority of the reports are akin to tone policing though, and this is where we are a bit uncomfortable on what to do (and reports take longer to deal with), it also often involves two or more sides where, more often than not, both have their own share of spiraling the thing into a bigger mess than it should be.
We don't want moderation to be used as a way to "win" your debate or beat into the ground someone who's already getting piled on, ok maybe that person was wrong (whether it's about data or the way he framed his argument, it doesn't matter) but she/he didn't get there alone and amongst the various courses of action you could take (like dropping the subject, trying to empathize with the other poster to find some kind of agreement, trying to reframe his/her own argument to better understand what he/she wanted to point out etc.) it's more often than not just people arguing back and forth and getting more heated while having no interest whatsoever to find any sort of common ground.

Honestly it just comes down to



Mind I ask who that would be?
Chairman comes to mind, Zenitora (who self requested his perma ban, to be fair it was a bit of a relief for us with the amount of concern/moderation we needed to have with him) after checking warning history I also see Bryank75, McSpeed and... that's it?

Ban is rare, multiple bans I think there are litterally only a few of them (more than a couple one could say)



It's clearly what happened there with HFBob, it wasn't the first time either and I don't think this is a posting style we should endorse as a community, while clearly it wasn't the intended effect it was the direct cause of having one of our member (which we had 0 problem with) ask for a permaban due to not being comfortable here anymore.

This is a net loss for the community, and one we could have avoided and that I made a direct action for only for it to be squandered not long after.



I feel like this the right attitude to have instead of skipping the whole discussion altogether to reply to what's convenient for you while ignoring everything else
I'm not a big poster myself, and my total is being inflated by the number of mod posts I had to do lately so I get the feeling and... it's alright ? If you put your ego asides and come here with the intent of learning and exchange occasionnaly whenever you feel comfortable and/or legitimate doing so this is perfectly fine

In the end it comes down to what vision of a forum you wish to enforce, there is no secret that I'm more fond of having less but more valuable posts and I have my gripes with low effort posts, 1 line snarky posts (or reactionnary pics), double posts, and posts ignoring whole discussions altogether and jumping in late.

What we're trying to enforce is less of that whenever possible, of course it's still cool to have fun once in a while, but this is a forum, not 4chan, not Twitter, not Discord, not Facebook, we all have plenty of time to post whatever we want to post and it's not a real time live discussion happening. I guess it might not come off as too newcomer friendly, which isn't the aim in itself per se as I don't remember any newcomer with honest questions being shunned here ever, and be a bit time consuming but... I mean overall what's up to debate here is what kind of level of discussion you want/expect to have.

HFBob's posts at that point were like litterally the embodiment of many things I wish we wouldn't have

- Double post
- Barging in ignoring the matter was closed (only would have taken looking a few posts below)
- Misreading the original point
- Somehow missing the fact it was a mod post (not the most surprising fact considering the above points)
- Replying back after being told to stop and redirect him to this topic if needed (although considering my post I understand why he did it, doesn't make it right but I'll come to that later on)


In the end it also comes down to respect, like, does that post need to be from a mod for it to make sense ?
If it's from a mod you bow down to it only because it was written by some figure of authority, while if it's not the case then it's definitely something to be combative about ?
It does give more legitimacy but it feels like a terrible way of thinking, the crux of the matter isn't who spoke but what was spoken, I don't want anyone to blindly agree with me because I can enforce some punitions on the forum, I'm also a member first and foremost (even if being a mod has taken a toll on my capacity to being so due to the time investment at some points like here)




I agree with a good part of what you said and I'm glad someone pointed it out, it wouldn't have felt right to run away with it.
To be honest I wrote something even worse at first, but quickly edited some of it out, it's not hard to guess why and how I ended up posting that, just check @Lelouch0612 post above.

On that particular moderation event I did the whole thing, stepped in for a mod post to try to stop the piling up on Gartooth, replied back to HFBob and enforced his warning, honestly I shouldn't have and it would've been better for me to step back at some point (another mod also proposed to enforce the warning, but as I was available first I did it myself) as it's something we have done before between mods to avoid making moderation feels like a personal affair, this is the kind of backfire that can happen when you deal with moderation tasks too quickly, lesson learned I hope.

Regardless HFBob warning is still 100% justified for multiple reasons mentioned above and in others posts as well, but don't worry about it, a warning isn't much.

Now on my case... if I were to follow the 6 points guidelines I layed above then... I had no report on my post (I think it's still possible to report mod posts) but we can think I didn't because I was a mod, so for the sake of the argument let's say you reported me there, which would be fine. It's certainly singular to report a mod but why not, that stuff might be needed at times in order to avoid power trips which most of us probably saw happening at least once in our life

Anyway the logical "punishment" I would take trying to take an outsider point of view would be some kind of slap on the wrist, there was no prior infrigement that I know off so that thing would logically be either a PM or a mod post in thread which is the usual first step, I can do self admonishment here all I want but that wouldn't look right, I can ask @WestEgg @Coco or @Hiska-kun too but it'd still feel a bit fabricated.

So yeah I don't know, unless you have a better idea you'll have to take my word for it, I did try to spend a fair amount of time explaing myself there, laying out as much as I could and take the blame where I feel like I should.



I hope this is not how you really feel, because as you can see we can share pretty much anything there, a mod, like any other member, can and should be criticized when it's needed.



Yes, not my best showing clearly and I'm sorry for that.
This is such a quality post that I don't know what to say or where to start.
I really felt sadness when I read that Gartooth left, but I was also... let's call it "surprised" by your modpost.
So first of all, please accept my apologies if you felt that I crossed some lines (or however that is worded in English).
Second of... ... well, I don't know. I started and deleted the next sentence so many times (as usual) that I'll leave it at that.

Thank you for your reply and I wish you good luck and happy modding!
Yeah, I don't know what to say... :)
 
This is such a quality post that I don't know what to say or where to start.
I really felt sadness when I read that Gartooth left, but I was also... let's call it "surprised" by your modpost.
So first of all, please accept my apologies if you felt that I crossed some lines (or however that is worded in English).
Second of... ... well, I don't know. I started and deleted the next sentence so many times (as usual) that I'll leave it at that.

Thank you for your reply and I wish you good luck and happy modding!
Yeah, I don't know what to say... :)
Not Fisico but I wanted to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the topic. I feel you added a fresh perspective and helped the conversation to advance further ! ;)
 
Quick question, I could swear this was discussed earlier but I’m gonna ask it here just to be sure:

Someone on another forum I frequent asked if I could share the salescharts on a more regular basis in the designated thread. I’m open to it but I always want to make sure IB is credited. Is that OK yes or no?
 
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